Word: sweeney
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...young artist should "avert the gaze from self...and penetrate the maze" lest self-pity destroy his creativity. Following his own credo, John L. Sweeney, as critic, teacher, and Curator of Lamont's Poetry Room, has, for the last ten years, been a benevolent father for Harvard's young poets...
...much of his own poetry he has shyly hidden from the public only John Sweeney knows. "An eminently unpublished poet imminently publishing," according to John Mason Brown, Sweeney's study of Henry James' art criticism will be issued in London this summer. His past works include a few essays for "little" magazines, an edition of the writings of Dylan Thomas, and his 1954 Phi Beta Kappa poem "An Arch for Janus." A critical evaluation of directions in modern poetry, written in collaboration with Elizabeth Drew and a few minor poems complete his Widener listing...
Shunning academic advancement and the glory of publication, Sweeney is primarily a teacher and a scholar. He is "a superb instructor, thoroughly Socratic," one of the section men in his Humanities 3 course has said. "He brings his class by questions to points that I could present only in a lecture...
...teaching, however, consists of informal work with students who come to him with their own poetry. His sympathetic enthusiasm makes him an ideal audience. His criticism, delivered with vigorous precision, is helpful and encouraging. In their early years, poets like Leslie Fiedler, Ruth Stone, and Delmore Schwartz benefited from Sweeney's sponsorship...
...Jack Sweeney's attitude toward my writing has always been very encouraging," said Richard Wilbur, now a Wellesley professor, who worked with him several years ago. When Wilbur published his first, unheralded book of poetry, his critic bought several copies and sent them to friends with his enthusiastic recommendation. This concern for young poets is reflected in Sweeney's efforts to purchase their works for the Poetry Room and the English collection of Widener...